


only a wound

by wolfvoices



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Tolkien Femslash Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-04 09:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11552070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfvoices/pseuds/wolfvoices
Summary: collected Arwen x Tauriel ficlets.





	1. kiss me hard before you go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [philukas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philukas/gifts).



      Rivendell is blooming when Tauriel prepares to take her leave, spring bringing the wood alive. She stands before the exiting path, Arwen before her.

      “Return to me,” she says, her hands clutching Tauriel’s like lilies under the stars. “Promise me,  _meleth nîn_.”

      And Tauriel thinks of Kili, thinks of _amrâlimê_ , how she did not look back, not once, and something in her tells her then:  _this is a promise you will not break._

      “I promise,” she answers, and kisses Arwen again. “Farewell.” Tauriel brushes a strand of Arwen’s hair back, looks at her lips. “My lady.”

      “It’s Arwen,” she smiles. “Always.”

      Tauriel goes— and this time, she does look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt from [queerglorfindel](http://queerglorfindel.tumblr.com/) for the song "Tell Me There's a Garden" by Joseph.
> 
> title from "Summertime Sadness" by Lana Del Rey.


	2. remain

      Lothlórien dies, and Arwen does too with every breath she takes. In Minas Tirith she took up the pastime of gardening, and here she does it too, planting elanor in the spaces where flowers are dying. Lothlórien is a shell without the lady Galadriel, a shell that is breaking bit by bit.

      The wood-elf she met long ago in Rivendell— Tauriel— still haunts her steps.  _My lady,_  she calls her. She reminds Arwen to eat and to drink and tells her the great stories of her people, stories of the stars. She is no high elf, not as cultured as Arwen— she is not familiar with the great poets, nor Gondor’s court. But something in her reminds Arwen of Aragorn; rustic and wandering, with hands gentle as the rain.

      One day, Arwen wakes. _I will never see Aragorn again_ , she thinks.  _but perhaps there is comfort still to be had._

      She goes to Tauriel, sharpening her knives beneath the mallorn, whistling a song. Never far. “Stay with me,” she pleads, over and over again. 

      “Of course,” Tauriel always answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt from [frickyouimahobbit](http://frickyouimahobbit.tumblr.com/) "being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage" by Lao Tzu.


	3. not all those who wander

      It is a sweet summer night when Tauriel returns, a song on her tongue, her hair red as autumn. When Lindir calls her Arwen comes running (and how she has waited, and she may be immortal but these months have dragged like stones) breathless in the evening.

      Her daggers are at sheathed her side (and Arwen thinks _how lethal, how lovely you are_ ) and she is covered with blood and covered with dirt and covered with grime and smells of sweat but she is the only religion Arwen has ever known, ever will know.

      Her fingers drag through Tauriel’s hair, curl at the nape of her neck. “Meleth-nín,” she whispers.

      “My Evenstar,” Tauriel answers. “My Lúthien.”

      Hours later, in the growing light of the dawn they lie next to each other, body to body, Tauriel asleep.I could forsake Valinor for this. What is the west, thinks Arwen, compared to the starlight?


	4. but we linger still

      Tauriel returns to Lórien near dawn, night still settled across the land. She has taken to her kin’s practice of riding across the boundless fields below the stars, returning every morning, Arwen waiting for her. Her horse neighs, lies down, and she climbs the stairs circling the tree into the canopy.

She finds Arwen there, gazing at the stars. Arwen who holds, unlike Lothlórien, which dies with every breath they take. 

      Tauriel takes her hand, runs her lips across the ridges of her fingers. In the twilight Arwen’s skin almost glows. She looks like another simmering twilight; she looks like the last star in a dying sky.

      “That there,“ Arwen murmurs, pointing to a light on the far horizon. “is my grandfather.“

      “A star,” says Tauriel, almost dubiously.

      “Eärendil,” answers Arwen. “Surely you’ve heard of him?“ Her voice lifts, curls into an edge that is half-joking.

      “Yes,” answers Tauriel. “The star of the morning.” She says no more, struck once again by how old Arwen is— Arwen who has seen three millennia come and go, Arwen who is a remnant of a dying world, a world that is passing into myth. _How lonely it must be,_ she thinks. _To be the last. How utterly lonely._ “I have,” she responds, finally. “Once or twice.”

      Arwen laughs, then, and if Tauriel could stop time, it would be in that moment, then, her voice like reeds billowing in the grass, a soft note on a viol. “What stories did your mother tell you?”

      Tauriel remains silent. “She died,” she answers. “When I was very young.”

      Arwen’s face softens. She takes Tauriel’s hand. “Before that.”

      “She raised me to be brave,” Tauriel pauses. “She told us about gothwin favored by Araw, children lost in the woods and the woods themselves raising them. Stories like that. That’s all I can remember.” It’s all she has left, of her mother. Stories. Lullabies she sung her to sleep with. The King’s word. _You have her bearing,_ he told her. Even her face is veiled in Tauriel’s memory. Her mother might as well have never existed at all. 

      “True stories?“ Arwen asks.

      Tauriel shrugs. “Does it matter? Perhaps. But who is to tell, with fairytales?”

      “And the Lord? What stories did he tell you?”

      “He told us stories of his time in Doriath. Beren and Lúthien. Tales he heard from the King’s court. When he could. His lady wife told us more. About Mithrellas and Nimrodel.” she laughs. “Once I went in the woods looking for them. I was convinced I would find them, bathing at the inlet of some stream or sleeping in the branches of a willow.”

      “I imagine that gave the marchwardens a scare.”

      “It did. I wasn’t allowed from my chambers for days.”

      They lapse into silence, gazing at the stars.

      “Do you miss him?” It’s a foolish question. “I never knew him but— you were going to die for him.”

      “Of course,” answers Arwen. “Do you miss Kili?”

      “When he first died— I thought I was going to fade. Every day I woke up and hoped it would be the last. I wanted it to be over.”

      “What changed?”

      “I met you.” And Arwen looks her in the eye— her gaze as sudden as a waterfall, steady as a mountain. Tauriel takes her hand again, kisses it again.

      “We’ll never see them again.” Arwen speaks, finally.

      “No,” says Tauriel. “I don’t suppose we will.” Dwarves become stone when they die, or so her people said, and men— who knows what becomes of men, gifted with an unknown doom. But Arwen and her— they are immortal, and who is to say how many ages they will see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks Katta for betaing!
> 
> Araw: the Sindarin word for Oromë, huntsman of the Valar.   
> gothwin: female Elven warriors.


	5. no city for them, no city for us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel and Arwen meet again, in Gondor, years after first settings eyes on another.

      Aragorn dies in the spring, and Gondor does not forgive her, the elven-queen. When Arwen walks along the corridors she hears whispers, but when she turns the corners there is nothing. Silence. Stone on stone, menacing. 

      “Where will you go, mother?“ Tindómiel asks, her youngest daughter. 

      “I don’t know,“ Arwen answers. She has not been to Rivendell in years, and has no kin in Mirkwood. But she knows she cannot die in this city. It will not let her. Minas Tirith has never loved her, and it certainly won’t now. 

      Tauriel comes to Gondor like a river running in, hair red as autumn. When Arwen holds vigil she lingers, nearby, she too discomforted by the stone of the city.

      ( _I beg your pardon, my lady,_ Tauriel tells her.  _But this is no city for kings and queens. It was done with them long ago._

 _No,_  agrees Arwen. _It is not.)_

      The night after the funeral she slips in Arwen’s chambers. “Come with me,“ she says. “Please.”

      Arwen does not answer, but by morning her bags are packed. 


	6. your sea roars bitter elegies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from "Yours Is An Empty Hope" by Nightwish.

      Arwen wakes in the middle of the night, the seasong haunting her dreams. She leaves their bed, Tauriel sound asleep, and goes out to the balcony overlooking Mithlond.

 _Come to us,_ the waves seem to murmur, as they splash against the rocks. She can hear it here, too: the seasong, the mumblings of the ocean sweet in her ears. It touches her, and she can feel goosebumps prickle on her shoulder and her heart leap. Uinen’s melody, the scrape of rocks against the shore, a humming in her bones. And Ulmo’s song too, deeper, richer, from deep beneath the ocean: a song of whales and things unknown. She remember when she first heard the call, a child of twenty, when her father took her to the havens.  _A day will come where we will all pass west_ , he had said, pointing to the far horizon.  _To Valinor._  A call to return to a homeland she had never known. 

She almost startles when Tauriel rests her arm around her shoulders. Light as a deer. “Can you hear it?” Arwen asks her. “The seasong?”

Tauriel shakes her head. “No,” she answers. “Only the waves.”

      Arwen says nothing. She knows the answer; she has always known, since that fateful day in Rivendell when they met. She is her father’s daughter, and the sea-longing runs deep in her veins. But Tauriel— Tauriel is Mirkwood’s child. Mirkwood itself raised her, Mirkwood itself was her mother when her true mother could not be. She belongs to its whispering trees, the darkness beneath the eaves, to the forest river, to the winding catacombs of Thranduil’s kingdom.  _Daughter of the forest_ , her name means. And daughter she is. Arwen may have dragged her to these shores, but she cannot make Tauriel wade into the water.   _How can I care for the sea when the stars are so boundless_ , Tauriel said once, in their bed.

      And how could she? Tauriel’s people have never heard the call of the sea and do not care to hear it. The light of Valinor is beyond them. It was always beyond them.

      “When will you be leaving?” Tauriel asks her, bringing Arwen from her thoughts. Tauriel’s face tells nothing, but her eyes betray her sadness.

      “Soon,” Arwen answers. “This month, the next— who is to say?“

      Tauriel is quiet, but she buries her face into Arwen’s hair.  _She is weeping_ , Arwen realizes. It lasts only for a few minutes, and then Tauriel looks at her again, her face hardened— a soldier’s glare. _She will endure_ , Arwen thinks.  _She will survive me._

      “Let’s go back to bed,” she says, glancing once more at the waves. Tauriel takes her hand, and remains silent for the rest of the night. In morning, Arwen wakes, and Tauriel is gone, her scent lingering in the bed.


	7. love will find out the way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel ventures north, seeking a gift.

      The Withered Heath is cruel, and cold, and above all desolate. The soil is ash beneath her feet, and the mountains are barren and treeless. Nothing grows here, save the occasional shriveled tree. Here, the sun brings no warmth to her skin, and the wind brings bitter kisses. It is a dead land, and an old one— the skulls of creatures from an age ago rest in the shadows of the mountains. But always, always she thinks of Arwen, in Rivendell so far away. At night she dreams of her lips, her hands, her skin in the moonlight.  _My evenstar_ , she thinks. 

      In the Withered Heath she finds no living dragons, nor treasure, but she continues anyway. But on her twelfth day in she sees a dust in the distance, and urges her horse forward until it consumes them. She shields her eyes with her scarf looks up, and a darkness passes over her. A dragon. The beauty of its wings vast and terrifying, and she is frozen as if by the stars.  _So it’s true. They survived,_  she thinks.  _And I did too._

      She dismounts, walks further forward. It’s a foolish thing— Legolas would be horrified, seeing her risk angering a dragon— but she does it anyway. And she comes to the nest.

 _What are you looking for,_ Thranduil had asked her, when she passed through Mirkwood.  

 _I don’t know,_  she said, in response. _Something. A sign._

      And she has found it. In the shadows of the mountains she lifts an egg, holds it in light of the sun.  _This would make a queenly gift,_  she thinks, and sweeps away into the dust, Arwen in her thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from [this poem.](http://www.bartleby.com/101/391.html)


End file.
